On What We Do Not Know
Full Moon Report ft. The Emperor, Eight of Pentacles, and Nine of Swords
Noemí Delgado, cards by Zoe Storz
On this Full Harvest Moon in Aries, I ask the deck, my ancestors, our angels, and the Divine for guidance on Uncertainty.
The Mind: The Emperor
Uncertainty, at least in its negative sense, arises from feeling out of control: out of alignment with what is unfolding. The Emperor is traditionally interpreted as representing a powerful and unwavering sort of control; however, this card also teaches us about release and surrender. Many of us have been conditioned to think in terms of opposites rather than to analyze interdependence. When our minds are constantly reacting, narrating, and planning, we feel that we are acquiring control—a temporary ease to our omnipresent sense of precarity. But these mind games are not true control: they happen impulsively and unconsciously and, when the universe continues to run its course, the sobering reality of uncertainty hits us again. Maybe not reacting, not planning, letting go, and embracing the mystical—sometimes tragic—uncertainty of life is the purest form of control. The Emperor, who holds the key to Life, reveals that gaining enough control over the mind and relinquishing a false sense of control over creation will open us up to new realities.
The Body: Eight of Pentacles
The Eight of Pentacles depicts a total immersion in the steady cultivation of creative practices, particularly ones anchored in the elemental realm. Pulling this card in reference to The Body signals that we must use our physical selves as portals for creative connection with the natural elements. Engaging in such connections allows us to accumulate trust in the cosmic, which protects us from a fear of the unpredictable. As we invest in the power of the elemental realm—trusting its direction and relinquishing mental “control” (or lack of control)—we divest from the systems that use uncertainty as a mode of social and physical domination. Embodying a faith in the universe—not the “powers” that seek to rule it—requires creativity and persistence. The Eight of Pentacles teaches us to keep practicing this until our rituals cultivate a belief in our own universal uncertainty. So start arranging flowers with your hands, filming birds with your eyes, and writing notes to trees.
The Spirit: Nine of Swords
The Nine of Swords depicts the grief associated with admitting a truth that you’ve been fighting to overlook. If we take this truth to be the uncertainty that weaves our lives together, then we understand that our spirits are grieving the disillusion of permanence. It is okay to grieve; in fact, grief is the only way to move into acceptance. We do not have to rush this process. We must be empathetic towards ourselves and hold each other tightly while learning to transmute our fear of the unforeseeable into power. Transmuting fear into power requires destabilizing and reimagining: tapping into other realities while creating in this one.
As tragedy flourishes and empires fall, those of us who have gotten this far hiding from the truth of uncertainty now must face it. We must gain enough control of our minds to surrender the false control that we generate in a constant attempt to fight the unknown. We must creatively and corporeally embrace the universe's uncertainty if we are to divest from the systems that use the threat of the unknown to hold us hostage. Only through the grief we feel in our spirits can we alchemize fear into power. Once we harmonize with cosmic uncertainty, we can build new worlds inside the one that’s crumbling.
I wish you blessings this moon cycle,
Noemí
Liked this piece? Venmo @cuidandoalas, a collective generating ongoing support—including paying for food, medication, private transportation, and medical bills—for Indigenous language keepers and midwives in El Salvador.
You can read Noemí’s essay “Territory of the Moon Not the State” in issue 1.